Back to work

After a nice vacation in New York, we're back to renovation reality. I'll post some pictures of our trip soon, but for now I'll show you what Jesse's been up to since he got back earlier this week.

First off, because we lack a solid door between our super hot garage and our kitchen, it's been getting really really really hot in the house. In case you don't believe me, here is a thermometer at 1:00pm. It would be even hotter if I hadn't gotten up at 6am to open some windows to get a cool breeze (making sure to close them before 10am.)


I'm not sure how well it comes through, but this light blue will be the color of our living room area.

This green will be the kitchen color - although the yellow around it makes it look a little more yellow than it is.

Here it is. Our (dirty) kitchen that Jesse's been drywalling and taping since Tuesday. What you can't see is how he also hung drywall on the ceiling - BY HIMSELF. I'm still not sure how he managed that. But I don't ask questions of super renovation man.

A while back I promised better pictures of my car - once Liz sent me the pictures from my Mother's Day surprise trip to New York of Sawyer, Dylan and I. Alas, they never came. But since we were there, I took some initiative and got them off her camera myself. Now that I have my pictures, here's the promised picture of my car. I really really really love it.

Ah, Cheeba. I thank the universe that she's still with us. You see, Jesse picked me up at the airport yesterday around one o'clock in the afternoon. For some reason, I was super super tired and fell asleep on the sofa around 3:00. At some point, Jesse decided to move me to the bed and since it was hot in the bedroom, opened our bedroom window (which does not have a screen.) I slept and slept and slept some more. He came to bed at 11:00 (at which time I woke up and asked if it was dinner time...) and apparently forgot to shut the window. And he closed the bedroom door, locking Cheeba in our room.
Around 1:30am I woke up to a dog barking and a cat fight. I saw the door was shut and the window was open and ran to the window in time to see Cheeba being attacked by a cat twice her size near the edge of the canyon. Oh my goodness.
I screamed (but Cheeba couldn't hear me as she is deaf), scaring the other cat away. By the time I got outside (in my underware with no shoes) both cats were gone. Yelling may have happened. At Jesse.
We searched the canyon for about a half hour with headlamps and flashlights. We just couldn't find her. Finally, I heard the next-dog-door barking again and I ran back up to the house. Nothing was there but I started talking to the dog, asking it where Cheeba was. All of the sudden, I heard a sheepish little "mew" behind me. I turned around to see Cheeba running toward me and I scooped her up as quickly as I could.
She had a bite mark on her back, was missing several whiskers and was very very dirty - but alive and happy to be back inside. She demanded pets then drank water like she'd never had any and ate a ton of food. I watched her for quite some time, happy she'd been returned to me.


Phew!

More to come later.

Travertine Station

We woke up Friday morning and realized that we needed about two more bags of self-leveling compound for the floor - we were hoping we could get away with the five we'd put down Thursday evening, but it just wasn't meant to be. We put the two last bags down and went back to the Big Orange Box while it dried to get mortar, sealer, and all that jazz. We also stopped by our friend, Robert's, house to borrow his wet tile saw - which ended up being invaluable.


Of course we had to put our stamp down - because who can resist wet cement?

We started by arguing about the pattern we wanted the 12x12 tiles to be in - and came to an agreement on a brick layout at a 45 degree angle to the room. We had to lay all the tiles down and figure out which ones needed to be cut:

Jesse on the tile saw. No time for bathroom breaks.




Here it is all laid out and cut - if only we didn't have to start picking it all up to lay the mortar down...
Time to start laying down mortar - at midnight...

This is as far as we were going to get - 3:30am and headed to bed...

A nice early start at 12:00!

Check out the 'stache and the guns. He should be illegal.



Last piece!!!!!!!!!!
All those tiny little 1/16" spacers really add up. Done. 9:30pm on the 4th of July. Well, at least we heard the fireworks.

Remedy Station

After the epic fail on Tuesday, we took a little break to figure out how to get out of the mess. I convinced Jesse to call the manufacturer of the Quick Set Self Leveling Cement just to let them know what happened, ask them if anyone else has had any problems with that batch, and see if they would take mercy on us. Luckily, Custom Building Products stands firmly behind all of their products and despite Jesse's errors, gladly agreed to set us up with five new bags of Quick Set. I couldn't believe it. Everyone go out and buy Custom Building Products stuff. They're great.

We also had a few things to work on from the inspection on Monday - adding nail plates to our studs, adding a clean-out to the kitchen sink drain, and testing our gas lines and sewer vents. The nail plates and clean-out were no problem. The problem came when we tried to test our gas line. It wouldn't even hold 1 psi. Jesse figured out it was a regulator at the meter so he went out and capped the line at the meter. He was able to pump it up - but it had some leaks...

To fix them, Jesse took the whole gas line apart and put it back together - tight. Super success - no gas is escaping from our lines!

Back to the mess in the kitchen...

Boy oh boy, what a mess.

After about two hours of working on it, Jesse gave up on his idea to chip down to a level point and then level it all out with an angle grinder.

He decided just to make some cuts and start chipping away so we could then use our five brand new bags of self-leveling cement to fill everything in and make a nice flat floor.

This is what he did...ALL DAY LONG!

All those chips sure do add up...
The only problem with that is that by the time I got home from work today, there was about 1/16th of an inch of dust covering the entire house.
I give up.
I am going to become one with the dust.
I love dust.
Dusty dust dust dust.
Done complaining.

The floor is all ready for the pouring of the cement - after I got down on my hands and knees to vacuum away any dust or cement chips that were left.

Boy, sometimes I wish we had a third person just to take pictures. Cheeba refuses to do it.
You should have seen us. We had two 5-gallon buckets going so we could rotate through them faster. I measured out the 6.5 quarts of water for each to start, then as I was operating the mixer Jesse was slowly adding the concrete, then I would finish mixing while he was adding water to the next bucket, then, at exactly two minutes, he'd grab the bucket and pour. While he was pouring, I'd be readying the next bucket by rinsing it out and measuring out the next water.
We didn't have watches on and we're both pretty spooked about what happened last time, so we'd watch the clock on the coffee maker and as soon as the minute advanced, we'd start in on the new batch.
Done! Kind of. We ran out of product but we've decided to just move on because most of what's left will be under cabinets anyway and Jesse can shim those out. There are a few little islands left and we'll grind those down in the morning.

We've canceled Independence Day due to being behind schedule (sad faces) but that gives us three whole days to work together on getting this done - as I have Friday off.
So here's the schedule:
Friday: grind down floor, Big Orange Box trip to purchase necessities, lay mortar onto our newly flattened floor, set travertine
Saturday: grout travertine
Sunday: jesse finishes (grind down built-up joint compound, level, add trim) the windows in the kitchen (they'll look similar to the living room windows) and corinne goes to work to get some time in on some side projects so we can eat.

It's going to be a long but productive one.